Blowing Out Candles
by skycloud86
Summary: Nina's birthdays throughout the years, from the first to the one after the last.
1. 1975

_**A/N – It's Sarah Clarke's birthday today (February 16th), so I thought I would write something about Nina's birthday (May 5th), and I came up with a good idea – Nina describing her birthday in various years. The first chapter is non-canon as it is set in 1975, the second is pre-Day One, whilst the rest deal with canonical events.**_

**Massachusetts General Hospital – Wednesday, May 5th, 1975**

Imagine a woman in her thirties, long dark brown hair flowing down her back, emerald green eyes closed shut, mouth wide open with the loudest of screams emanating from within. On this day, her first child, her daughter, will be born. That would be me, Nina Myers. The woman, my mother Marilyn, was a good mom and a good person as well – she died in the '90s and she's probably one of the few people I miss. The dark haired man standing next to the bed and holding my mother's hand tightly, that's my father Donald. One of the best fathers you could hope for, but he too died an untimely death in a car crash.

One final push, and out I come into the world, all red and with a thin mat of dark hair on my tiny head. A slap on the ass to get my lungs working, and off I go crying, before being wrapped in some cosy white blanket and passed to my mother, who looks at me, and instantly falls in love with her new child. Streaks of sunlight come in through the window and fall onto her head, and she looks angelic.

They had been hoping for a daughter, and were happy to find out that I was indeed going to be female. My name, Nina, came from an old friend of theirs that I never met, but who was supposedly someone close to them. I've always wondered just who that person was, and if she would ever know just what I would do in my life.

As a child, I wasn't the cold, heartless killer that I was in my final few years, and in fact I was quite warm and friendly. My childhood wasn't bad, and even if it were I wouldn't use it as a crutch in my adult years anyway, nor did I light fires, abuse small animals and wet the bed, so I wasn't destined to be a serial killer. No, I don't think I was much like what I became back then. You'll probably be wondering – would she prefer to be like that sweet child as an adult, and not become the murderous traitor so many will remember me for? I can't give you any answer other than maybe. Maybe if my life had not taken certain roads, and maybe if I had met the right people on certain days, then I could see myself as a warm, loving adult rather than the cold monster that could take life without so much as a flinch.

The first time they took me home, they were so proud. My father was telling my mother of his dreams and aspirations for his perfect daughter, and my mother was telling my father how beautiful my blue-green eyes looked. I suppose the fact that they had been trying for a baby for so long had made my birth even more special, although it was no miracle, as my parents were not religious in any sense of the word. When my brother was born, that made our family complete, and I suppose I could call my childhood almost perfect.

I suppose this sounds sort of cheesy, but after I escaped from North Africa, I managed to creep back into the United States, and using a disguise, I visited important childhood locations. My old schools were still there, and they didn't look much different after so long, which was a surprise as I thought that they would have moved on. Of course, that reminded me of Jack, and so I moved on and forgot about those buildings. My childhood home in Boston was gone, replaced by some parking lot for a shopping mall, and it seemed wrong. It had been a beautiful house built almost a hundred years before I was born, and the vast garden that surrounded it had been my own world to explore as a child during the years we lived in Boston. In Chicago, the house were we lived was still there, and I'm sure someone inside noticed me gazing into the house, and as a distant police siren could be heard coming closer a few minutes later, I had to leave quickly. Now, you probably think I went to Los Angeles, but I kept myself far away from that city. I suppose I could almost predict that I would meet my death the first time I set foot back in that town, and that premonition came true even though I didn't think it would, even when I was being transported to CTU, even when I swung my head back towards the torturer's needle, even when Jack shot me in the shoulder, and even when I could see in his steely eyes that he was about to put me down.


	2. 2001

**Los Angeles, Sunday, May 5th, 2001**

Fast forward twenty-six years, and here I am as Chief of Staff at CTU Los Angeles. I work closely with Jack and Tony, and I believe that I am as good at my job as I can ever hope to be. My other job, the one which I hide from everyone, requires me to keep this job and to make sure I stay as high up the ladder as I can get. As a close friend and confidant of Jack, I use him as much as I can without seeming suspicious to get information for my employers, and I sometimes almost feel bad for him. Jack's a genuinely nice person if you know him, and he seems to really value my friendship. Not that I don't value his, it's just that mine is for my own interests, and his is more personal, more human. I'm not going to lie to you – Jack is one of the few people that could ever make me want to give up the life of terrorism that I hide so well, and there have been a couple of rare occasions where I just wanted to confess all to him and hope that he would help me – most of the time, however, I would never entertain any such idea. My plans for the day include doing nothing other than lying on my cosy couch, reading a book and sipping the occasional glass of wine. It's a day off, and I plan to spend it relaxing and forgetting about the convoluted life of a federal agent slash undercover terrorist.

Anyway, today's a Sunday, and so it's a rare day off for me, unless some major threat to Los Angeles materialises, but I've not heard anything on the old terrorist grapevine of anything about to go down, so I'm not on alert like a couple of other agents I know of. Jack, for instance, has this rather nice wife and daughter, and he's probably spending some quality family time together with them. Only problem is, his mind will be on something to do with his work, and I can almost guarantee you that some sort of argument will erupt. It might be a huge volcanic one that temporarily breaks up the relationship or it might be a rather lukewarm one that gets pushed back to the back of Teri's mind, only to be taken back out in the event of a larger quarrel. As for Tony, chances are that he's watching some baseball game somewhere, or maybe even playing it. He loves his baseball – even has this little Cubs mug that he uses at work.

I've made no special plans for today, and it's pretty much just a normal day. My birthday is not something I particularly like to celebrate, and life goes on. Some people at work, and some I know in my private life, try to get me to do something, but I just don't feel like it requires some sort of special event. I remember my childhood birthdays, when I would wake up as if it were a summertime Christmas, and would excitedly open my presents. It's not that I feel old, or that the idea of my birthday is somewhat tired, it's just that with each passing year, I know I could be heading straight for the time when I will be activated by my terrorist bosses, and who knows what might happen?


	3. 2002

**Los Angeles, Monday, May 5th, 2002**

Well, it happened. I was activated and arrested on the very same day, and now I'm in prison potentially for the rest of my life, although I do have a few options that I will certainly take if I can get the chance to. Jack was furious at me when he found out, and he was already wanting me dead minutes before he knew that I had killed his wife. I think that if things had been different, and he had known of her death before he caught me, I would be in a grave by now, but I'm not. Circumstances have thrown me a silver lining yet again, and although I should always remember that one day I won't get away with it, I don't and I know it's going to be the death of me.

Prison ain't so bad, I suppose. Sure, I could do with actually having some control over my life, and the food could be at least edible, but here I can rest, knowing that once I get out of this building alive, I'll have plenty of options open to me. Undercover work will be impossible, but I was doing that for seven years, and now I want to try something different, something a little less complicated and that involves a lower risk of getting in too deep. If I go back and work for my employer, he's sure to send me on boring journeys to negotiate deals, so I think I'll be looking for new bosses. You might wonder why someone who wants to be in total control could be so willing to work for someone else – well, that's because I'm still far too low down the ladder. Maybe in twenty years I'll be the boss, so long as I don't get killed before then.

This may sound surprising, but Jack has visited me in jail, but of course it's only to try and get answers. Why did I kill Teri? Why did I betray him? I see the look in his eyes changing as they react to my voice, my face as I listen to him almost beg for the words that he's looking for. It almost makes me sad that he is so hopeful that one day I might break down and confess all, tell him everything he could ever want to know about me and my motives. That, I promise you, will never happen. Tony visited once, and like the emotional mess he can be at times, he cried. Tears came down his cheeks, and although I did like the guy, it's weird just how much love he seemed to have for me, this passion that he had for the woman who betrayed them all. I sometimes wonder if he thinks that the Nina he loved was real, but I won't tell him the truth, just like I won't tell Jack.

I was lucky in court when they sentenced me. A guilty plea and a good act were all that I could do to convince the judge and jury that I was sorry, and it worked. Life without parole is always more preferable to sitting on Death Row for a couple of decades until they drag me down to the execution chamber and send a cocktail of drugs into me, as if that was punishment enough for multiple murders, espionage and treason. I often imagine my execution, and I know that Jack would be there, staring at me. Maybe I would tease him in my final moments by mouthing silently to him, as if I mean to tell him something, then I realise that even that would be cruel for me, and I tell myself that I don't have to see myself stuck in this place for too long.

To tell you the truth, after what happened in New York last September, I'm lucky I'm not in Guantanamo right now, wearing orange and being waterboarded for information that I probably don't have. I may be a terrorist, and I may be less attached to other people, but I was shocked and saddened by those events, although my sympathy for the victims was diminished when the guards treated me to numerous beatings after 9/11 for being a terrorist and a traitor, as if they saw me as an extension of the terrorist monster that attacked America.


End file.
